Pioneering art historian Jacinto Quirarte, a noted pre-Columbian art expert and among the first scholars to recognize and write about the Chicano art movement, died July 20 in San Antonio. He was 80.

“With Jacinto's passing, UTSA has lost one its most remarkable founding figures,” said Dan Gelo, dean of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts, in a press release. “He was our first fine arts dean, laying the groundwork for today's excellent programs.”

Quirarte was most at home at the lectern, teaching, Gelo added.

“Nowadays, there is lots of excitement surrounding pre-Columbian art and the architecture of the missions, but it was Jacinto who led the movement to have these subjects included in the art history mainstream, and that is a profound and lasting legacy.”

Quirarte was best known for a recent award-winning book, “The Art and Architecture of Texas Missions,” but he was also remembered for an early work on Chicano artists.

Sabrina Quirarte McGowan noted that her father's interest in Chicano artists stemmed from their use of pre-Columbian symbols.

“In 1972, he and my mom drove from San Antonio to New York and then on to California so he could interview as many Chicano artists along the way,” she said. “Those interviews and his research became the basis of his book, ‘Mexican American Artists.'”

It met controversy, seemingly from all sides.

Some Anglo scholars questioned the legitimacy of studying Chicano art, while some of the artists themselves were reluctant to participate in a book funded by corporate interests, said Charles Field, a professor emeritus of art at UTSA and a Quirarte friend of 45 years.

Quirarte persevered, teaching at the University of Texas at Austin and coming to the fledgling UTSA campus to help establish its standards for faculty hiring and curricula, Field said.

As director of the Centro Venezolano in Caracas, Venezuela, he worked with the U.S. State Department in a cultural exchange program that helped introduce pop artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein to South America, Field said.

A collector of pre-Columbian and Chicano works, including those of César Martínez of San Antonio and the late Luis Jiménez of El Paso, Quirarte helped write several museum catalogs on their works.

“He was also a good guy who did a lot for a lot of folks,” Field said.

Quirarte was born in the Arizona mining town of Jerome. His father was a copper miner, and the family picked fruit in the summer.

“My father delivered bread before school in the morning,” Quirarte McGowan said. “He wasn't paid, but the baker gave him bread for his family.”

The family later moved to San Francisco.

“His younger sister said they always knew he would do something important,” his daughter said. “He was the kid reading a book with the flashlight under the covers at night.”

In 1996, Quirarte told the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art Oral History Program that in school he was “the last one standing” during mathematics bees.

After college, he served in the Air Force as a navigator, attending flight school in Harlingen.

A professor emeritus of art history at UTSA, he retired in 1999 and continued to teach until 2008.

“My father taught me that hard work was something you do, not something you resent or regret. It's just necessary to accomplish your goals,” his daughter said. “He taught me that family is the best way to get through life.”

Quirarte was married for 57 years to Sara Quirarte. When they wed, they had known each other for only six weeks.

At the time of his death, Quirarte was at work on a new book on Maya vases.

“He had a lot of dreams,” his daughter said. “He lived out every one.”